Managing an E-Mentoring Community to Support Students with Disabilities: A Case Study

This article provides an introduction to mentor, near-peer, and peer support as they apply to promoting the academic and career success of young people with disabilities. The authors discuss specific benefits of mentoring and document access challenges encountered by students with disabilities. They present a case study of a successful internet-based mentoring community for college-bound youth with disabilities. The experiences and recommendations shared can be used by others to design, implement, and sustain mentoring communities online. As stated by President George W. Bush, “Every child should be educated to his or her full potential. ” (White House, 2003). The spirit, reflected in the title “No Child Left Behind, ” embraces a range of goals for American education, and its breadth takes in the estimated 6.3 million children in our schools who have disabilities (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002). The vision is for people with disabilities to have equal access to the full range of education, employment, community, and recreational opportu-nities this country offers its citizens. In the United States, we have seen education for young people with disabilities evolve from no place in the classrooms to segregated classrooms to mainstreaming to full inclusion